15 comments:

Your poem does a very good job, I think, of miming the mood of the amphora, i.e., the “heaven,” the “cold and clean depths,” what is suggested by “YOUR ZONE .” That’s beautifully subtle (also entertaining). The amphora itself is just amazing. I think everyone should be reminded every day about the beauty and genius that can be found in this often wretched-seeming world, in silence. It’s embarrassing, but I definitely identify with the “dim votary (burnt out bulb).” So be it. Curtis

Tom, thank you for another terrific poem to begin another year. I turn 70 in a few months and am very aware of how fortunate I am to have made it this far and to still have contemporaries around who are most often of like mind and spirit. May it be as creative, healthy and happy as possible at this stage of the game. ML

Words to welcome in a new year by, I reckon -- you in YOUR ZONE over there, I in mine here (howling northeast wind tearing branches off eucalyptus trees waving overhead on the drive down Mesa Road to the channel, which appeared more storm-tossed than Pacific. . . .

removed and re:placed/re:sat the toilet with new wax ring to find that the original leak was NOT under the toilet, but rather the leak was around the left bowel rubber grommet ! was hard to bend this (nearly) 71 year old boddhi down there to see!

wasn't exactly a moment to write a poem about!

anyway, I've been REALLY over this past year appreciating your "stuff" and the images gone into with it-all!

your's today really for me "breaks out"

as for the old light bulb?

the new ones that Our Leaders are demanding

well, when they burn out they are considered Hazardous Waste and if you throw one in the trashyou are arrested as a "terrorist" and go directly to a Military Court and to jailwith-out a trial... for EVER !

Before the day is out, I would like to mention the great pleasure and "flash upon that inward eye" bliss Steve's poems here give me. There are other parts of my life I'd like to change and improve, but not my experiences here. Ed: I think the "71 year old boddhi" image is a keeper. Also, I've tried to work the word "grommet" into conversations ever since I learned what a grommet is. Fortunately, my daughter is the mechanic in the family; I'm the "grommet dilletante." Curtis

Six months after the new yearI'm back to begin to catch upas much as I can, with this beauty.Brought back from my distractionsby the first of June and my search for Ed Dorn's "The Air of June Sings" which brought me eventually here. Because I'm reading the Collected Poems of the great Welsh poet R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) and haven't seen his poems here yet, I'd love to quote him but the comment format doesn't seem to permit his line lengths. I'll try using / to indicate line breaks when the lines go overlong.Thanks, Tom, as they say, for all you do!

"The River"

And the cobbled waterOf the stream with the trout's indelible/Shadows that winterHas not erased -- I walk itAgain under a cleanSky with the fish, speckled like thrushes,/Silently singing among the weeds'Branches. I bring the heartNot the mind to the interpretationOf their music, letting the streamComb me, feeling it freshIn my veins, revisiting the sources/That are as near nowAs on the morning I set out from them.